


The Way the Maths Work Out

by tuesdaycoming



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dragon Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan, F/F, Gen, Growing Old Apart, Manipulation, Nonexplicit Threats, Time Travel, all off screen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28943517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesdaycoming/pseuds/tuesdaycoming
Summary: When Eldarion’s feet rest on solid ground once more, her ankles still ache from the twist of impractical heels over the broken cobbled roads of Rome.What happens when Eldarion comes back.
Relationships: Eldarion & Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan, Eldarion & Sasha Racket, Marie Curie/Eldarion (Rusty Quill Gaming)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 23





	The Way the Maths Work Out

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Holo for the brain worms and Kat for the maths

When Eldarion’s feet rest on solid ground once more, her ankles still ache from the twist of impractical heels over the broken cobbled roads of Rome. Eight hours to recover her spells. There is no one to greet her when she stands, but she expected as much. If they made it back at all, they must have made it back, it will have been some time ago.

Prague is still floating where it ought to be. Her name is still on her office door. “In Absentia.” When Eldarion runs her fingers over the bronzed nameplate they come away dusted, and something hopeful in her chest cries out in pain. The student who stumbles upon her wears a skirt that falls flat and a jacket with wide lapels. Eldarion does not sink to asking, desperate and panicked, what date it is until she is brought before Marie Currie and the door is closed behind her, and the lines on her lover’s face cut deep.

“They said you were gone.”

Eldarion’s laugh is a strangled thing. “You didn’t take my name down.”

“Well,” Currie sighs and takes her hand. It does not feel the same. “I’d hoped.”

***

Eldarion is assured she did some good in following the goblin into Rome. Marie tells her about them, the charges she brought back: the ones who have died, who have moved on, the one who is a dragon. At that, Eldarion catches Marie’s rueful look. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought him along then. It would have made our work easier.” 

“There are still fewer dragons in the world than when you left.” Marie says. “That we’re here at all,” she shrugs. It is a surrender to the unknown Eldarion has never seen on her. “May be because you brought him back.” She finishes. 

“Sasha?” 

Marie shakes her head. 

In the end, Eldarion thinks it is a relief to them both that she doesn’t try to claw back what they were forty years ago. 

***

The dragon summons her for an audience by sending a kobold with gleaming scales and a wax sealed letter. She hadn’t given anyone her address, but for a dragon, she isn’t surprised. 

The room is lavish, but small. It suits the size of the halfling who steps inside after Eldarion has been kept waiting almost an hour past the appointed time. He apologizes, tell her his name is Hamid. She remembers. He was not so scaled then, but the dig, when she voices it, doesn’t get the rise she expects. 

“My husband remembers that, but most people don’t. It must be quite the shock for it to feel so recent. It was for me, when you helped us.” Hamid chuckles, remembering a joke she isn’t privy to. 

“I’ve been told quite a lot happened in those eighteen minutes. More after. The clothing,” She glances down to smooth her skirt, “has a new charm to it.” 

Hamid beams at that. Eldarion wonders, looks at his pleated cuffs and wide lapels, but of course. Fashion would follow the heroes of the age if they cared to indulge in it. He is eager to tell her about the ways the world has changed, so she listens. It is easy to forget Hamid is a dragon, and this, she thinks, he indulges as well. 

***

He reminds her one evening, she has taken to calling on him in the evenings, why he invited her to his home to begin with. 

“To gauge my feelings on the newest Meritocrat.” Eldarion says over a glass of wine. 

“What?” Hamid laughs. As if she is ridiculous. As if she had not once held a dragon’s tooth in her palm after ripping it from a mouth still hot with flame. “No, I’m not—” He cocks his head, sets down his drink. “Do you think of me as a Meritocrat, Eldarion?” 

She pauses. Considers, in the space of a moment, that there are no good answers here, and inclines her head in the manner she learned in her youth two hundred, two hundred and forty years ago. A suggestion of a thought and a gesture that might be filled in with whatever meaning Hamid would like to put to it. 

“I remember how terrible it was,” Hamid picks his glass up, settles back into his chair, “when you brought us into that plane to find my brother. The twisting and stretching of it,” he shudders, “What a terrible ordeal it must have been to practice learning that.” 

“You have to know the theory quite well. It is… not something to make a light mistake in casting.” 

“You did, though.” Hamid’s voice is light. He is staring right at her, and Eldarion finds she cannot look away. “Or there would have been more of us to greet you when you showed your face here again, wouldn’t there?” Eldarion casts about for words. It had been a good spell. This, she is sure of. “She wrote a letter.” 

“Sasha?”

“Do you know how much she hated you?” Hamid is still smiling when he says it, but his teeth are sharp. “Because I’ve only seen her that angry at one other person. And the thing about Sasha,” 

“Stop.” 

“Is that she never actually told us what you did to her. She was just angry, and then you made a mistake, and then she got lost two thousand years ago and died. I might live that long, but _I_ can’t go back that far and get her.” 

Eldarion sets her glass down and puts her hands to the sides of her skirt, ready to pull the fabric up to flee if necessary. “That isn’t how Plane Shift works.” 

Hamid hums pleasantly. “I’m telling you there’s a letter because it means she survived long enough to write it. It means you have a few decades to aim for.” 

***

Rome is beautiful before the fall. It is beautiful on fire. It is beautiful draped in ash. Eldarion learns how to hold her eyes wide open, and she sees many Romes.


End file.
